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God knows why Ubisoft decided to stick with the Far Cry 2 naming convention for its latest sandbox shooter. Far Cry 2 isn’t made by the same developer as the original PC shooter, it has a different graphics engine, a completely different narrative structure, it doesn’t star the same protagonist and it has dropped the tropical island chains for the rolling savannas, deserts and jungles of Africa. And there are no mutants either.
However, once you get over this misconception, we’re happy to report that there’s an enormously enjoyable game to be found that stands out in completely its own right.
Far Cry 2 gives players a huge, 50 square km playground in which to cause mayhem. At the start, you can pick one from a handful of different mercenary characters who’ll you be controlling in the quest to hunt down the elusive arms dealer who sparked the whole civil war in the first place.
The Jackal is really the star of the show, not the shallow characters that populate the rest of the world; you’ll piece together his mysterious persona from a handful of personal encounters that take place between chapters and from the interview tapes that are hidden around the environment. His conflicting character is at the heart of the game’s deeper message about war and human nature.
At the start, the vague approach to the plot seems bewildering, but as you put in the hours, it all slowly starts to fit together like an elaborate puzzle, which rewards you more as you take the time to investigate deeper and comes to surprising, yet satisfying conclusion by the end.
You rapidly learn that worst way to play Far Cry 2 is to rush around trying complete missions as quickly as possible. You need to savour the open world environment and make up your own mind as to how to complete your goal. You can sneak about silenced weapon in hand, take on foes from long-range with a rifle, or stroll about in broad daylight bombarding everything with rockets and grenades; it’s up to you. Taking to the time to plan your attack is where the real enjoyment is to be had.
While the enemy Ai is prone to some staggering displays of stupidity from time to time, in the most part it is dogged and sneaky. This makes combat spectacularly varied as you choose either stick to high ground where you get a good view of your approaching adversaries, or dash rapidly between cover so you can stop yourself getting surrounded. Or you can turn everything to chaos by igniting the bush with flame throwers and Molotov cocktails, a tactic than can yield some beautiful pyrotechnic eye-candy.
Ubisoft has ensured that you have plenty of distractions to prevent you from just careening right through the main missions, in which you play off both sides of the pointless conflict against each other. Using your GPS tracker you can hunt for hidden caches of uncut diamonds, the game’s currency, or you can unlock new safe-houses to save your game or take on extra missions to unlock new weapons to purchase. Your fellow mercenary buddies will also offer you alternative means to complete each major mission, with extra rewards for taking the time to do things their way. And as further obstacles to your progress are the ever-present guard posts.
These armed checkpoints and the roving patrol trucks can be the bane of your game life. Trying to drive straight through them will rapidly earn you a belly full of AK rounds, so you’ll need to stop, scope out the obstacle, and work out how you want to tackle it. This is when Far Cry 2 is at its most frustrating and repetitive; the frequency of patrols at latter stages of the game and the rapid re-spawn times at the guard posts can turn your game into a bit of trudge.
But the sheer scale of the environment and the freedom you have to do things your way easily overshadows the smaller gripes. The African setting is massive, stunning to behold, brimming with atmosphere and littered with wildlife; it’s a true technical marvel. While PC fans may find the controls a little too consoley compared to the tightness and complexity of the original Far Cry, or the more recent Crysis, the capacity for the AI to surprise makes it a highly satisfying experience.
Once you’ve found your own pace, Far Cry 2 is like having a vast combustible toy box to wreak havoc upon, offering countless hours of entertainment for your money.
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We were preparing ourselves to slate the G1, after an
initial hands-on when it launched failed to impress. However, 20 minutes after cracking the box open, and booting it up, we’d become more addicted to the HTC-made handset than to our BlackBerry - and that’s saying something.
Hardware
The G1 isn’t the prettiest of handsets. The slide-out qwerty keypad delivers a cracking noise, and gives it a very Sidekick look. In fact, we’re of the opinion the G1 could do without the whole bottom part, there’s certainly junk in this phone’s trunk. Ie, it’s got a really big bum.
At 3.2-inches, or 320 x 480 resolution, the screen could do with a brighten-up, as we can’t imagine sitting on a train watching a full episode of Lost, like with the iPhone or N96. Of course it’s touchscreen - and what a touchscreen it is. It surprised the pants off us, with how responsive and undemanding of a heavy pawing it is.
There are three ways to control the G1, with the touchscreen, qwerty keypad or trackball, the latter not really proving necessary, as the touchscreen is the preferred method of input.
With the web browser proving so addictive, it’s expected the battery life will be fairly poor. The quoted standby time is 130 hours, talktime is listed as 5 hours. It’s a bit hard to tell how many hours we got out of the battery, but needless to say, we had to charge it every night when we went to bed, and would have to keep a charger in the office for emergencies, as they’re bound to happen.
The 3.2-megapixel camera produces some nice photos, not particularly great standard, but just what you’ve come to expect from a mobile phone. When taking them, the image fills the whole display, which is nice for the user to look at. Unless the person you’re taking the photo of is really unattractive, natch.
Call quality was exceptional, with making and receiving calls proving to be crystal clear and with a make-no-mistakes loudness. Likewise, texting was relatively pain-free, although it does take at least a day’s usage to accustom yourself with the G1’s keypad, a slide-out qwerty which could do with having the buttons raised in a more BlackBerry-esque form.
Software
The G1 is the first handset to run on the Android operating system, so it’s expected there’ll be some kinks that need ironing out occasionally. However, after several days of using it, we couldn’t see that many flaws in the software, and we were very proud to show it off to all and sundry.
This is largely in part thanks to the plethora of applications available through the Android Marketplace, such as the Lolcat Builder, which will wow your friends and make them insanely jealous (if they’re into geeky internet memes).
We did however have some drama with unlocking T-Mobile’s paranoid ‘are-you-over-18′ clause, where entering our credit card details after only the fourth time would let us download apps. The Marketplace is astonishingly easy to use after that crisis is dealt with, with the apps divided into categories and the search function will dig up anything you’re after, in seconds.
Our main concern with the apps seems to be that it could get dangerous downloading so many, as they appear to be saved automatically to the phone’s internal memory of 256MB, instead of to the microSD card inhabiting the memory card slot.
We hate to say it, but using the G1 gave us de ja vu from our time with the iPhone - holding your finger on an application on the desktop or menu for several seconds enables you to flick them to the location you’d prefer, and the desktop gives you about three pages where you can store them.
The notifications screen, which lies at the top of the display, scrolls down over the application or program you’re using, to update you on the messages you’ve received, or apps that have finished downloading. It’s extremely handy when using the web browser, and helps with changing between programs.
Speaking of the web browser, we’ve never known one to rival the iPhone’s quite this much. Pages auto-format to the size of the screen, and when the menu button is pressed, you can hop between the various browsers you have open. Scrolling down pages with a light touch of the finger worked well, but clicking on links was like trying to draw blood from a stone - very difficult, and entirely frustrating.
Now, we’re sure many of you are familiar with the delights of Google Maps, so you know being a Google-designed phone, the GPS is bound to work exceptionally well. We’re pleased to report it didn’t let us down once, although GPS is disabled by default - it doesn’t take too much effort to switch it on. It appears in the US, however, T-Mobile’s network isn’t quite as polished as here in the UK, with Engadget in particular having a tough time with the GPS.
Conclusion
We could go on for pages about the G1, as there’s literally so much to mention, but if you’re looking for a lengthier review, we’d heartily recommend heading over to Techradar, Gizmodo or Engadget for their takes on one of the biggest handsets of the year.
The G1 is a smart choice for anyone who doesn’t want an iPhone, whether that be due to the O2 exclusivity, the fact they’re an Apple hater, or they despise the lack of truly open source applications on offer. The G1 is a fair alternative to the iPhone, but also a darn good phone in its own right. The best thing about it is it’ll only get better, with the Android Marketplace launching properly next January, and thousands, if not millions, of people creating and adding to the rich Android platform.
The best test, however, is asking whether we’d buy one. And you know what? We think we would.